So, okay, you've got Space Pope, Jin/dickhead, and Rex-boy all blathering on that they're doing God's will. We can start spinning the sci-fi roulette, because we know that God will either be:A) Human, and this will all be about the folly of man's lust for power/knowledge.B) A giant bastard who will call us weak little nothings before we beat him into submissionC) There is no God/God is dead

I placed my bets on C because I thought it was the least stupid/most interesting option. So then Space Pope Freiza 3 dies, and we get a cutscene about inter-dimensional travel, because that's directly below time-travel in the list of things you should never-ever touch in your story. We arrive at Zanarkand Elysium, and surprise, it's actually a barren wasteland, but fortunately nobody has time to think it over too much because dickhead is going to explode everything.

Next we have a scene where Rex is tested by having all his party members accuse him of terrible things. In an ordinary JRPG, this would be the part where Rex goes, "No, you aren't my teammates -- they would never say such things!", or alternatively, "They might think that, but I know there's more to them than just this!". Instead he runs, cries, and accidentally murders Tora, Hana, Zeke, and Glasses. Due to his marvelous performance, he convinces the bajillion year-old man-god (yes, we landed on A) that humanity is totally cool now.

Rex promises man-god that he'll punch dickhead in the face, but of course that lasts about three seconds, because dickhead has a giant robot. You begin a fight that's so easy that you're instantly convinced there'll be a second form. He drops to two-thirds health, and then it's cutscene time! There's lots of screaming, Rex and Homukari are doing their thing, so this must be when his true form- nope, wait, the fight just resumed as per-usual, except all the orbs you put on him are now gone.

Super.

So you smack the robot until he can't take any more ouchies, and then Rex screams really super loud and blasts the crap out of the poor thing. Dickhead pops out, only he's kinda dying, so that whole salvager's code thing seems to have failed for about the bazillionth time. He explodes into the air having finally found his purpose in life, which is apparently to be an extremely generic and forgettable villain in a JRPG.

But oh no, the Ridley music is playing, and you know what that means! So while the space station is on a collision course to SR388, Homukari decides that she's not a generic enough heroine yet, and deceives the party into escaping while she dies to save the world. Unfortunately the fantasy-land characters recognise escape-pods on sight, so she tricks an elementary-school-aged robot-girl into making sure that nobody can make it back. Rex tries to explain that this is the stupidest thing he's ever heard, but everyone tells him that he needs to man-up, because despite multiple conversations about how the blades would rather not survive without their drivers (and Jin's entire story arc), if he really loves Homukari, he should be totally cool about living the rest of his life without her.

Homukari then replaces Rex's iron-man heart with the regular human model, leaving him with a grey rock as a memento of their time together. Along with his original heart, he also managed to retrieve his original weapon, because I think the devs forgot that Nia is also a blade. The fantasy protagonists then pilot the space-pod out of the station, and the universe is so confused by this that it doesn't even incinerate them on entry into the atmosphere. The escape pod then explodes, allowing Gramps to turn into a dragon and save everybody, thereby totally justify his not dying back in the first chapter of the game.

Man-god's final gift to humanity is to make the cloud sea go away so that all the people can live on a massive Pangaea. Nevermind that the titans are an integral part to this new evolutionary cycle you've created, or that the warring nations probably won't be super stoked about being placed right next to each other. Omnipotence must have gotten sucked into the portal with the other half of him.

The credits then begin to roll as a montage of all the defining moments of Rex and Homukari's relationship plays out, except that it doesn't actually start until three minutes in, because they didn't have enough material to fit the full six minutes. Then the credits end, and everyone is happy except for Rex, because his super-real and believable relationship with cardboard and tsundere cardboard was all that matters to him- oh wait, they're back, and for no explicable reason, no longer share a body. Rex stares on, while the two chuckle at the look on his face when he thought they were going to die. Nia shoves him forward, and he takes a few tentative steps, his mind frantically trying to figure out the words to describe the sheer level of bullshit they just pulled. Something is mouthed, but what it was will never be known, for in a game where every character has sausage-fingers, nobody in their right mind would even attempt to hide an important message behind lip syncing.

Also if you were waiting for Vandham's thing about how you can put a blade into your body to use its mana to come to anything, or that Addam's appearance or identity might be integral to the story, or that any other of the game's myriad set-ups might have some payoff, then you can join me in feeling like a right fool for expecting that the game's writers not to have skipped that day in storytelling 101.

He's perfectly entitled to his opinion, just as I'm entitled to mine. I wish I had a more serious post to offer on finishing the game, but for the most part I feel like I'd just be repeating myself. Instead, I had a little bit of fun... Actually a lot of fun. The criticisms are still there though, and I stand by them, just as I stand by every other criticism I leveled toward the game. I still ended up with 84 hours played, and considering I bailed on Star Ocean 5 after just 10 (a.k.a. the half-way point), it's not like I found the game utterly atrocious. Funnily enough, those three words do a pretty solid job summing up my feelings.

I do want to get to the original, but for now I've got to clear some stuff in my backlog. Unless Dragon Quest XI's release date ends up much closer that I'm thinking, it'll be a while yet before the next big thing comes along, so there's plenty of time.

Personally I'm just going to go into it without expectations. As I said, I went into 2 with huge expectations, and uh... it didn't live up to them. Expectation and hype are strange beasts: many-a-time I've found myself disappointed by a game that's failed to live up to the expectations I set. It's not uncommon for me to go back to these games and find I actually quite enjoy them once the burden of expectation has been lifted. That's not always the case, but in general I place more value on a second playthrough over the first. Something like Heavy Rain can be interesting the first time, but on repeat I find that I was more invested in the "what will happen next?" rather than any of the characters or plot. It's a big reason why I hold on to games rather than sell them. Re-playing Xenoblade 2 is the farthest thing on my mind, but the game wasn't so awful that I won't hold onto it on the off-chance that I wind-up someday giving it a second chance.

On the other hand, hype-culture is a large part of the video game world anymore. It's difficult to anticipate a game without being dragged into the hype-culture. Even niche JRPGs have their little circles where importers will hype a game to hell and back, getting fans in a tizzy looking forward to a masterpiece that even the best of games would be challenged to live up to. I remember a time when Xillia 2 was hyped by many importers (though there were detractors, don't get me wrong) to be the best Tales game yet. I recall when Trails of Cold Steel 2 was so freaking huge that you couldn't beat it in less than 100 hours. Needless to say, Xillia 2 became one of the most unnecessary Tales games ever, while How Long to Beat lists the average completion of Cold Steel 2 at less than the original (though this wasn't my experience). Even in this thread Xenoblade X has been called "one of the best RPGs I have ever played" (by Arvis) and "...definitely one of my favourites" (by [male pronoun]), and you yourself profess the original game to be "...easily one of the last great JRPGs that we got...". Is it any surprise that I went into Xenoblade 2 with such high expectations?

Now, I don't mean to point a finger at anybody for what boils down to my own failings. Heck, I'm happy when there's stuff to get excited for -- I will never forget 2012, when only one game got me excited all year. Even right now I'm finding that Radiant Historia is pleasantly living up to the reputation its earned. But I nonetheless wonder, how many players end up disappointed, frustrated, or otherwise turned away by something which was, ultimately, not the fault of the game itself? How many good games go unfinished not because of their quality, but because they failed to reach a bar they were never even aware of?

Personally I'm just going to go into it without expectations. As I said, I went into 2 with huge expectations, and uh... it didn't live up to them. Expectation and hype are strange beasts: many-a-time I've found myself disappointed by a game that's failed to live up to the expectations I set. It's not uncommon for me to go back to these games and find I actually quite enjoy them once the burden of expectation has been lifted. That's not always the case, but in general I place more value on a second playthrough over the first. Something like Heavy Rain can be interesting the first time, but on repeat I find that I was more invested in the "what will happen next?" rather than any of the characters or plot. It's a big reason why I hold on to games rather than sell them. Re-playing Xenoblade 2 is the farthest thing on my mind, but the game wasn't so awful that I won't hold onto it on the off-chance that I wind-up someday giving it a second chance.

On the other hand, hype-culture is a large part of the video game world anymore. It's difficult to anticipate a game without being dragged into the hype-culture. Even niche JRPGs have their little circles where importers will hype a game to hell and back, getting fans in a tizzy looking forward to a masterpiece that even the best of games would be challenged to live up to. I remember a time when Xillia 2 was hyped by many importers (though there were detractors, don't get me wrong) to be the best Tales game yet. I recall when Trails of Cold Steel 2 was so freaking huge that you couldn't beat it in less than 100 hours. Needless to say, Xillia 2 became one of the most unnecessary Tales games ever, while How Long to Beat lists the average completion of Cold Steel 2 at less than the original (though this wasn't my experience). Even in this thread Xenoblade X has been called "one of the best RPGs I have ever played" (by Arvis) and "...definitely one of my favourites" (by [male pronoun]), and you yourself profess the original game to be "...easily one of the last great JRPGs that we got...". Is it any surprise that I went into Xenoblade 2 with such high expectations?

Now, I don't mean to point a finger at anybody for what boils down to my own failings. Heck, I'm happy when there's stuff to get excited for -- I will never forget 2012, when only one game got me excited all year. Even right now I'm finding that Radiant Historia is pleasantly living up to the reputation its earned. But I nonetheless wonder, how many players end up disappointed, frustrated, or otherwise turned away by something which was, ultimately, not the fault of the game itself? How many good games go unfinished not because of their quality, but because they failed to reach a bar they were never even aware of?

And this is why you need to learn how to form your own opinion and to know your own interests. I know plenty of people who'll hype up games like Darkest Dungeon which I'll give zero fucks about because A) it doesn't fit my preferred aesthetics, B) I'm not a big dungeon crawler fan, and C) the mechanics aren't anything I haven't seen before.

That being said, the statement about XBC1 being the best JRPG of the last console generation is very much an accurate statement. In that, said console generation was perhaps the single worst seen for the genre since the wild and woolly days of prior to the NES era. The game itself was at the time revolutionary due to the combined facts of its unique setting, its relatively straight forward plot and characters, and gameplay mechanics that actually folded into themselves almost as elegantly as origami (as if the developers basically said "Let's get rid of anything more complicated than Levels = Progression, and work our way from there."). Some of the biggest issues plaguing XBCs X & 2 stem from the fact that the devs have overcomplicated things and moved away from some of the very QoL changes they brought to the genre's forefront with XBC1.

And this is why you need to learn how to form your own opinion and to know your own interests.

I generally do, but I also want to try new things to see if maybe I like them. I mean, I generally hate 3D Zelda, but I heard enough about BotW that I decided I might as well give it a shot -- turns out, I enjoy it quite a bit. I also tried PUBG, and despite it being the hottest thing in shooter-land and generally enjoying multiplayer shooters, I hated it. I don't regret taking a chance on Xenoblade 2. No matter what I say about the game, I definitely don't REGRET my time with it. Very, VERY few things push me that hard.

In that, said console generation was perhaps the single worst seen for the genre since the wild and woolly days of prior to the NES era.

I think I mentioned a while back wondering if that was the case. Last gen really was just not very good for JRPGs unless you're into the niche (among the already niche genre) stuff like NIS, Compile Hearts, or Gust. I had a friend who bought a PS3 recently to play Persona 5 (don't ask, I don't know), and I'll be damned if I couldn't think of an EXCLUSIVE to recommend aside from Demon's Souls. Everything's getting "enhanced" ports because the PS4 and Switch are selling like mad, making the whole last generation feel like a bit of an odd duck. I even get the strong sense that if I wait long enough there's a good shot Xenoblade Chronicles will just get a Switch port.

So 1.3 is live and as an lol fuck you its now much harder to farm Rare and Legendary Core Crystals. Also the new Blades (save one) are Gacha Hell only (and only available in NG+) and as a bonus there are no changes to Rare Blade pull rates.

Additionally, you can no longer stack Blades passive stat modifiers (so Fourth is no longer a Dunban style Gundam nor can Tora tank the earth).

The upside is that Zeke can now invoke his Shining Eye of Justice! and you can buy Overdrives, Rare and Legendary Core Crystals, WP Manuals, Accessory Expansion Slots and delevel from wandering Bards with Bonus Exp.